The sergeant turned, snapping a salute as he came round.
“I need you to keep moving ’mong the men,” the lieutenant explained. “Shake ’em, whisper in their ear, kick ’em in their arse if you have to—but help me keep these shavetails awake or it will be our hides.”
“They ain’t had decent shut-eye in—”
“You have my orders, Sergeant,” Parnell interrupted. “They must stay awake so we can move out at an instant.”
McCarthy stared east. “Gonna be a while till sunup—”
“You’re a damn fine sergeant, McCarthy,” Parnell interrupted, gripping hold of the slim, shorter McCarthy’s tunic in his beefy hand. “I’ve served with many a good fighting man on the Continent and here in Amerikay, but you’re one of the finest I’ve ever had ride into a scrap with me. Don’t go mucking things up so I have to put you on report for running away with your mouth. Now be a good soldier and keep these men awake till we jump this village the trackers found up ahead.”
“Yes, sir,” McCarthy replied as Parnell freed him. The sergeant turned and started off down the ragged line where H Company had dismounted and ground-hobbled their horses to remain close at hand; then collapsed into the damp, dewy grass right where they were.
There was grumbling when the first sergeant went through the ranks—to be sure, there was some grumbling. And Parnell knew most of it came from the Irishmen among them, more so than from any of those pig-loving Germans. God knows—they had enough Germans in this man’s army, and sure as hell too goddamned many of them in Parnell’s H Company!
The big, fleshy lieutenant who could tax the resources of all but the sturdiest of cavalry mounts hungered to fire up his own pipe while they waited here in the dark above this cleft of a narrow canyon. But Perry had issued orders forbidding both fires to boil coffee and light their pipes. Rightly so, Parnell brooded. This close to the red buggers, sneaking up on their savage bums the way they had—no telling just how close the colonel’s scouts had brought them to the village when the halt was ordered.
Those trackers were out now, feeling their way on down the canyon of White Bird Creek to locate the village before they would return to the battalion with their report. Stopped here in the black gut of a starless night, what troopers were still awake gazed down the steep, grassy slopes that dropped some twenty-six-hundred feet to the bottomland below. This ridge where Perry had ordered this halt until dawn stretched a little more than a mile to the west of that low mountain spur rising south of Grangeville. Nearly barren of timber, the ridge curved abruptly to the south, ending only when it reached the Salmon River. In those intervening seven miles, the undulating terrain descended more sharply at first, then gentled out near the creek bottom.
Pulling a sizable pinch of pipe tobacco from the ever-present leather tobacco pouch he kept stuffed inside his tunic, Parnell stuffed the wad inside his cheek and nestled it with the tip of his tongue. He stifled the cough that came with its bitter taste. Old goddamned shit, this army weed was. Likely been around since the bloody war—
The lieutenant hurtled into motion at that first bright flare of a sulphur-headed lucifer one of the men struck in the blackness at the head of the canyon.
“Snuff it out!”
That was McCarthy’s growl Parnell heard as he raced up to the soldier who whipped his hand in the cold air to extinguish the match he had just positioned over his well-worn pipe bowl.
“Goddamn you, soldier!” the lieutenant snarled as he lunged up before the private, finding it to be one of Perry’s F Company, a trumpeter who nervously shoved his trumpet and cord behind his left elbow.
Parnell felt like throttling him—making the son of a bitch the first casualty of the coming fight. “What’s your name, bugler?”
“J-Jones, sir.”
“No bloody pipes,” McCarthy hissed as he stepped in between the bewildered soldier and the fuming lieutenant, clearly set to jump right into the middle of that trumpeter.
“Remind ’em all again, Sergeant,” Parnell whispered angrily instead, an ugly edge to it. Times like these reminded him why there was two classes of fighting men in the American army: them that led, and them what had to be led. “Keep telling ’em there’ll be no pipes till after we’ve whipped us a bunch of red-bellies.”
“I don’t figger there’s gonna be much of a fight for me today, sir,” John M. Jones declared.
Parnell glared at him. “Why’s that, bugler?”
“I was in the drunk tank me own self when the general put that old Toohoolhool chief in the guardhouse with me. And that ugly ol’ turnip give me his word as a fellow prisoner that I wouldn’t get hurt if the soldiers and his warriors ever got into a scrap.”
“He say you wouldn’t get killed, that it?”
Jones nodded. “It’s just what the ol’ reprobate hisself told me—”
Parnell, Jones, McCarthy, and the others nearby turned slowly as the coyote called from the timbered hillside just behind his H Company’s position. The lieutenant immediately felt the hair rise on the back of his neck with that howl—something a bit uncanny about the timing of this wild bay … no coyote gonna call out when it’s spotted men … The skittish creature would be off and running away—
Then the howl’s last note went strangely off-key, quivering, lasting much longer than any coyote call Parnell had ever heard. Something imminently forbidding in it.
McCarthy slowly turned from the slope above to look down at the lieutenant. In that great, deafening silence that swept in as that final sinister note faded down the canyon, Parnell could see the deeply carved lines of grim resolution appear on his first sergeant’s face.
“It’s the Injuns, sir,” McCarthy whispered dourly. “The bastards saw the bloody match and they know we’ve come fer ’em.”
Chapter 32
Season of Hillal
1877
The Nez Perce called him No Feet, but he was not one of their people. No, this man named Seeskoomkee had come to live with the Nee-Me-Poo quite by the twists of fortune.
His skin was much darker than was the skin of these Northwest Indians. Some say he was an African who had somehow escaped his masters far to the south in California. Most only knew that he had been sold to a succession of owners as his life took him farther and farther north toward Oregon country.
Then three years ago the slave was purchased by a cruel Yakima chief named Kamiakin, who beat Seeskoomkee, gave him very little to eat, and provided him little more than a thin blanket to ward off the wind. To punish him for stealing some morsel of food, Kamiakin threw his slave out of his lodge one horribly cold winter night, hoping to teach him a lesson. As the temperatures continued to drop, the slave’s bare feet and hands began to swell with frostbite, pressing painfully against the crude iron shackles welded around his limbs.
By morning the damage was done. To save Seeskoomkee’s life a tribal physician hacked off both blackened feet and one of the hands.
The Yakima sold No Feet, useless as a slave now, to another nameless tribe, who eventually sold off their property to White Bird’s people for what they could barter for him. Seeskoomkee had been his name from that very day. No Feet.
With the aid of two sturdy walking staffs, he somehow had learned to grittily lurch around in an ungainly fashion on the stubs of what was left of his ankles. It wasn’t long before one of the most superb horsemen among the Non-Treaty bands, a warrior named Payenapta, the one called Hand in Hand, took the cripple under his tutelage and taught No Feet to ride. Together they braided a special harness that the eager student could step into and use to pull himself atop a pony with only that one good hand. It was nothing less than magical to watch how this lame man, who could barely hobble about, transformed himself into an omnipotent warrior once he was mounted on his pony.
Second only to Hand in Hand in his prowess on horseback.
If No Feet had not been born a Nez Perce … he was nothing less than a Nez Perce now.
Late yesterday afternoon h
is people had reached this camping ground located in the creek bottom as the White Bird made its last bend to the south. Here where they were sheltered from approach on the north by twin buttes, no more than thirty conical buffalo-hide lodges stood against the dusky hues of twilight as the supper fires were lit. The three bands in camp boasted some 135 warriors, including those who came and went on their raids.1 For the last few days the members of these three Non-Treaty bands had been in full revel as raiders brought plunder, cattle, and horses, along with a number of firearms, into the migrating camp. Not to mention the whiskey they discovered from time to time in the houses of the Shadows and among the white man’s wagons crossing Camas Prairie.
It was near twilight last night when one of the raiding parties returned to the village with a large keg of whiskey strapped to the back of a stolen horse. As the fires leaped into the dark, the celebration began. Dancing, singing, drinking, and coupling—life anew now that the Nez Perce had declared their freedom from the dictates of the white man’s army and his Indian agent.
Perhaps it was that No Feet had never acquired a taste for the whiskey because he had been a slave for so long, but he had no more than a few sips of the burning liquid before he and two others joined Hand in Hand to leave the noisy camp. As the sun went down, the chiefs declared need of sending out camp guards to watch the upper canyon. Not everyone could get drunk and carouse, allowed to sleep until midday before arising with a roaring thunder in their heads.
No Feet felt immense pride course its way through him that he had been chosen to come along, especially when Hand in Hand found out that Wettiwetti Haulis, called Vicious Weasel, and Koklok Ilppilp, known as Red Raven, the other two guards, had brought along a flask of the Shadow’s whiskey for themselves! The pair was drunk before moonset, which left only Hand in Hand and No Feet to keep watch through the long summer night.
Above them, along the rim of the canyon, No Feet saw that day was coming. He could recognize that graying line where last night’s dusting of stars was beginning to outline the crest of the surrounding heights. Now the brightest of stars were dimming and the sky becoming gray. Dawn would not be long in coming.
He blinked and held his breath, listening to this momentary stillness as time hung in the balance, these last heartbeats before the warming earth would cause the air to move once more. Then all he heard was the rattling snores of those two drunk guards who had been sleeping most of the night.
And then No Feet was sure his mentor was aware of what had changed on the hillside above them.
“Do you see them?” asked Hand in Hand.
Breathlessly No Feet nodded. “That can only be soldiers.”
“Soldiers,” Hand in Hand repeated the slur. “Come to slip up on our village.”
No Feet turned clumsily on his knees, starting to lumber back toward the brush where they had tied their ponies before taking up their watch here on the undulating slopes. He stopped, turned, and looked over his shoulder again. Yes, only white men—soldiers—rode in winding columns like that. Nez Perce raiders would be coming down toward the camp in single file. These were Shadows creeping up on them out of dawn’s inky darkness.
That first loud crack of the rawhide quirt slapping against bare flesh brought No Feet around immediately. Hand in Hand was grumbling angrily as he stepped away from Red Raven and cocked his arm back for another blow, savagely bringing his quirt down upon the shoulders of Vicious Weasel, the second of the drunken guards.
He was cursing them both, “… and your mothers’ wombs for ever whelping such worthless men! You might as well return to camp right now and start wailing with the old women … for both of you are nothing less than women!”
Again and again he rained blows down upon the two groggy men doing their best to roll away from the fury of his attack, from the painful lashing he delivered with each blow from that quirt. They would be no use, No Feet thought as he continued to lurch forward onto his one good hand, propelled through the grass on his knees.
Reaching his pony, No Feet grabbed hold of the braided loop that hung down on the right side of the animal. Rocking himself forward onto one of his stumps, he lifted the other leg and set the crude, scarred stump into the end of the loop. Then with his one hand he pulled himself against the side of the horse, heaved up, and kicked the other leg over. Sitting up, he straightened himself into that comfortable groove behind the pony’s withers, dragged the braided loop up, and tucked it beneath his buttocks where it would be out of the way, then reined the animal about in a tight circle.
No Feet stopped next to Hand in Hand. “Do not waste your time on them,” he said. “I am already halfway back to camp with the news.”
“Yes! Tell them,” Hand in Hand said as he backhanded Red Raven when the groggy warrior attempted to stand after his beating.
Without the whoop and war cry he felt surging within his chest, No Feet flailed the pony’s ribs with the stumps of his ankles. The animal bolted away, racing down the canyon toward the nearby village.
As the sky continued to lighten behind him, No Feet struggled to stay atop the heaving animal as it shuddered its way down the barren slope into the deepest part of the canyon where the White Bird began its final descent before it joined the waters of the Salmon River.
There they were!
As soon as he spotted the first lodges, No Feet finally freed the beast that had been crying for release inside his chest. Never before had he ever yelled so loud, nor so boldly. At that moment it reminded him of the shrill cry of a wounded mountain lion, coupled with the battle roar of a boar grizzly. And, therefore, the fierce wildness of his cry truly scared him.
“Awake! Awake, all you free people!” he shouted.
Now the dogs were barking and those ponies tied among the lodges were snorting, whickering, whinnying loudly in their own surprise and fear.
“Soldiers are coming! Soldiers are near!”
Heads were beginning to poke from the doorways in the gray light of that dawn, many rubbing their bleary, red-rimmed, whiskey-soaked eyes.
“Awake and prepare to fight, Nee-Me-Poo!” he cried as he raced through the elongated camp. “This is our day!”
At the end of the camp he saw old man White Bird totter out of his lodge, asking loudly, “The soldiers are on their way?”
“Yi! Yi! This is the day of our victory!” No Feet shrieked with joy as the village came to life around him. “For this is the day the Nee-Me-Poo are freed forever!”
* * *
The instant she heard the horses coming out of the dark, Isabella Benedict dragged her daughters into the brush at the side of the narrow trail that carved its way up the grassy slope to the top of the canyon.
She wanted to wail, sob, gnash her teeth at the damned bloody luck of things; instead, she bit her lower lip and made the little ones crouch down beside her, where they clung like deer ticks beneath her arms in the gray of dawn’s coming.
Oh, God—how she had struggled through the last two nights, alternately hiding, then scrambling a short distance across and around the steep hills that enclosed the canyon of the White Bird. Oftentimes too scared to move, what with every faint and frightening sound slipping out of the spooky night. With the little ones she had waited out the days, anxious for the sun to fall and darkness to finally cloak the land so she could lead them out of the brush by the hand, slowly picking their way into the night, feeling their way along the grassy slopes limned with nothing more than a dim starshine.
They’d had nothing at all to eat during their ordeal. And through it all Isabella had been so racked with fear for her girls that she hadn’t dared venture anywhere close to the streams for water. Instead, she had shown her daughters how to lick the dews and damps from the rain-sodden leaves right where they hid.
All she could think about last night as the children quietly whimpered beside her was doing her damnedest to make the top of the canyon by daybreak. Up on top they would cross over to the Camas Prairie, from where it would be no more
than ten miles into Mount Idaho. The last ten miles of their escape. She figured they could complete that leg of the journey Sunday night, reaching the settlement by sunup come Monday.
And now the sound of hoofbeats—just when the top of the ridge looked so close. Four miles of canyon behind them, no more than a mile of climbing left. If only they’d gotten on top before the sun came up …
The horsemen were coming. A real gaggle of ’em, from all the squeak of leather and thud of hooves.
Swallowing down the bitter gall of her disappointment, Isabella let her fear be the goad that drove her back into the brush, where she would hush and hide the children while the war party passed them by on their way to the savages’ camp farther down the canyon. In the black of last night, she and the little ones had heard the faint reverberations of the drums, a shrill note sung now and then, as those frightening echoes drifted up the canyon as they climbed for the top … getting closer and closer—
A sudden jangle of bit-chain, then the scrape of an iron horseshoe on rock!
Could these be white men?
“Stay!” she whispered to the two girls harshly, pressing down on their shoulders so they squatted on the ground. “Mamma’s gonna have us a look an’ I’ll be right back.”
Quickly kissing both girls on the forehead, Isabella wheeled and crawled through the thick brush on her hands and knees for the edge of the trail.
Out of the graying light she saw the first of them take form—shadowy, ghostly apparitions emerging from the clinging fingers of chilling ground mist. The familiar noises alerted her ears that these were white men on creaking saddles, their metal bridles, cinches, and hardware softly clinking in the cold, moist air. But what she saw take shape instead were Indians! Not that they weren’t dressed as white men: breeches rather than leggings, jackets and coats instead of blankets and war shirts. And they carried rifles instead of bows and kopluts, the beloved war clubs of these Nez Perce heathens.
These bastards likely stole that clothing from their victims and dressed in their plunder. Stole the rifles and abandoned their bows and war clubs. And those horses too, along with their saddles taken from some ranch where the settler and his family now lay dead in a pool of their own blood.
Cries from the Earth Page 31